Lord Piccolo Speaks

Actor James Marsters has been busy talking up the big-screen, live-action version of the anime classic Dragonball, wherein the former Buffy star plays the green-skinned villain Lord Piccolo.

"Definitely the story of this movie is different from the original. But it's a necessary change because we need to condense the long story of the original for a movie," Marsters told Jump Square magazine (via DBTheMovie.com). "For example, some characters in the original don't appear in the movie. And we try to give it a more gritty and graphic (realistic) feeling."

He continued, "Though there are differences between the two, I think it is all right if the core part of Dragonball remains. I let my son watch the anime's Dragonball, DBZ and DBGT since he was eight years old. At first, I thought it was too violent, but I realized this is the best show for training to become a true man. True men need not to flaunt themselves. They're calm, gentle and modest but when it comes to the crunch they don't hesitate to kill the enemy, and I think that's what Goku is."

Marsters added that his alien make-up took four hours to apply, and that he and actor Justin Chatwin, who plays Goku, convinced the director to make their costumes more along the lines of the outfits worn by the original characters.